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State, counties differ on when probes of child abuse are needed

TEARS OF A SISTER. Heather Trujillo, 21, is serving six years at the Youth Offender System facility in Pueblo for her role in the death of her little sister, Zoe Garcia. In 2007, Trujillo's mother, Dana, had been delgating parenting to her and her live-in boyfriend, Lamar Roberts. "She didn't discipline us," Trujillo said. "We could do what we wanted." Trujillo said that on Dec. 6, 2007, she, then 16 years old, and Roberts were mimicking the computer game "Mortal Kombat" when Zoe died. Trujillo, who pleaded guilty to child abuse negligently causing death but now claims Roberts acted alone, was sentenced to 18 years in prison, which will be suspended if she sucessfully completes her six years in the youth facility. Roberts pleaded guilty to child abuse resulting in death and was sentenced to 36 years in prison. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

State law dictates when child welfare departments are supposed to probe allegations of abuse and neglect, but counties have wide discretion in determining whether a call has enough information to proceed further.

The bruises on Zoe Garcia's face, arms and shoulders were yellow and faded.

During a substance abuse class, Aldrich Leathers' mother appeared drunk when she said she didn't want her son anymore. She did, however, pass a drug test.

Of the 72 children who have died since 2007 after their families or caregivers came to the attention of social services, 13 had every call made to child welfare workers screened out, or left unassigned and uninvestigated.

The calls were the only warnings caseworkers would get before the children wound up dead.

An additional 21 deaths were in families where caseworkers investigated at least one allegation but also screened out at least one complaint.

In eight of the deaths, the decision not to investigate violated state policies on when to open a case, according to a Denver Post review.

"It almost has to be a crisis before the state is aware of a child's situation," said Debbie Stafford, a former state representative who has worked to improve practices and transparency into decisions about child welfare cases.

A troubling policy change

For child welfare advocates who favor a more consistent approach in how cases are evaluated, a policy change this year is troubling.

Until this year, state rules required an automatic child abuse investigation after social services received a third call about a family within a three-year period. The so-called "third-referral" rule had been in place since Gov. Bill Owens' administration.

Now, there is no limit on the number of screen-outs allowed per family.

In April, a nine-member policy board at the state department of human services voted unanimously to change the rule after counties complained. The state determined that implementation of the rule was inconsistent across Colorado's county-run child welfare system.

"Right off the bat, there were inconsistencies about how it's done because there were two different schools of thought about what the rule meant," said Ruby Richards, child protection manager for the state Division of Child Welfare Services.

The one-sentence rule said child welfare workers "must assign for investigation (those) reports that are the third in two years, if the first two were not assigned for assessment."

A study by the state department of human services showed that in 2011 there were 7,039 third referrals of abuse or neglect that should have automatically been investigated under the policy. Fewer than half — 47 percent — were investigated.

County departments said the rule was not only confusing, but time-consuming, forcing caseworkers to use limited resources when they could have focused on more serious cases.

"It was sending workers out on things that really didn't meet the criteria for abuse or neglect and invading in families' privacy to raise their children when we really didn't have the authority to do that," Richards said.

Youlon D. Savage, chairman of the State Board of Human Services, said a heavy push for the rule change came from the three county commissioners serving on the board — Stephen Johnson in Larimer, David Long in Weld and Sam Pace in Saguache.

"It didn't make sense to make a county worker go out on something that was obviously a frivolous call," Johnson said. "My perspective is that picking a certain number of calls arbitrarily, without any knowledge of the case, is not really protecting kids."

REAL Colorado, part of the lobbying group Colorado Counties Inc., suggested the rule change to state officials. The revision requires child protection workers to only examine prior contacts with the family when deciding whether to open the third referral.

Giving caseworkers more flexibility

One ongoing concern for caseworkers trying to decide whether to open a child welfare case — and in Colorado they get about 80,000 calls reporting abuse or neglect every year — has been the inability to intervene in a family without launching a full investigation.

State officials hope a new approach called "differential response" will allow caseworkers more flexibility and prevent certain low- to moderate-risk cases from getting screened out.

In contrast to a traditional investigation in which caseworkers have to speak with the alleged victim away from the suspected abuser, caseworkers can meet with whole families.

"It's a very different approach to engage with the family and to identify with the family what the concerns are," Richards said.

Five Colorado counties are using the differential response method as part of a pilot program.

About 75 to 80 percent of the families that Arapahoe County serves are in the low- to moderate-risk level, Lytle said.

Legislation was passed this year to begin implementing differential response into other counties in 2013, but child welfare advocates are concerned it is too early to tell whether the approach is the best fit for Colorado's state-supervised, county-run system.

"Differential response has its place, but I also think that it needs to be limited in duration and there needs to be a high level of supervision so we aren't creating more resistant families," said Stephanie Villafuerte, director of the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center.

State officials said they don't believe differential response would have saved any of the 72 children who have died in Colorado since 2007 after the children's families or caregivers came to the attention of child welfare services.

They noted that caseworkers in Arapahoe County chose to use differential response in handling the case of Timothy and Alivia Ramirez, who ultimately died in a fire while their mother left them alone to party with her friends.

Still, the method provides one more option to consider individual circumstances within a family's situation, one of the most crucial and difficult tasks in child welfare, Richards said.

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